Queensland in February 2007

Summary

An active monsoon
trough brought above average rainfall to parts of Cape York Peninsula and the central and tropical coasts and adjacent inland.Drier than average
conditions occurred over much of the west and southeast of the state.

Rainfall

A low pressure system
over Cape York Peninsula, embedded in an active monsoon trough, brought
moderate to heavy falls of rain to parts of the tropical and Central
Coasts and adjacent interior regions on the 1st
and 2nd.Several
records were broken.Warden
Bend’s 268.6 mm was a new annual extreme daily total for that
station while Hecate with 349.2 mm and Roma Peak with 222.8 mm recorded
their highest February daily rainfalls on record. The monsoon trough
remained active and on the 9th Bamaga recorded a new February record of 265.0 mm.

Elsewhere in the
state, an active area of thunderstorms between St George and
Goondiwindi produced a new
February daily rainfall record for Cheriton of 107.0 mm on the 12th.

Drier
than average conditions occurred over the west of the state with less
than 20% of average totals over most of the northwest, Channel Country
and Warrego, though many of these parts had received good rainfall during January. Drier
than average conditions also continued in Southeast Queensland with
totals mostly 20 to 60% of average over the eastern Darling Downs and
southern Southeast Coast districts.

Temperature

Daytime maximum temperatures were slightly cooler than average over
Central
and Northern Queensland , with temperatures between 2 and 3 degrees
below average in a small area near Charters Towers and in central parts
of the Central Highlands. Slightly above average daytime
temperatures were recorded over Western
Queensland with temperatures between 2 and 3 degrees above average in a
small area near the southwest border and over the southwestern Maranoa
and Warrego.See
a map of maximum
temperature anomalies.The hottest day was 42.0°C at Cunnamulla
Post Office on the 7th,
followed by 41.7°C at Birdsville Airport on the 7th,
followed by
41.6°C at Birdsville Airport on the 25th.

The coldest day was 20.6°C at Toowoomba Airport on
the 13th, followed
by 20.8°C at Maleny Tamarind St on the 13th, followed
by 21.5°C at
Jimna Forestry on the 16th.

Overnight minimum temperatures
were slightly below average over far southeast and central Queensland,
with temperatures between 1 and 3 degrees below average over
southwestern parts of the Northern Goldfields district, the northern
Central West district and much of the North West district. Toorak
Research Station reported its lowest February mean daily minimum
temperature on record.See
a map of minimum
temperature anomalies.

The coldest night was 11.8°C at Applethorpe on the
3rd, followed by
12.3°C at Applethorpe on the 6th, followed by
12.9°C at Dalby Airport
on the 5th.

The warmest night was 30.0°C at Cunnamulla Post
Office on the 7th,
followed by 29.9°C at Birdsville Airport on the 25th,
followed by
29.8°C at Thargomindah Airport on the 25th.

Notes

This statement has been prepared based on information
available at
1 pm on Thursday 1 March 2007.
Some checks have been made on the data, but it is possible that results
will change
as new information becomes available.

Normals are long-term means based on observations
from all available years of record, which vary widely from site to
site.
They are not shown for sites with less than 10 years of record, as they
cannot then be calculated reliably.
The median
is sometimes more representative than the
mean
of "normal" rain.

The Rank indicates how rainfall this time compares
with the climate record for the site,
based on the decile
ranking (very low rainfall is in decile 1,
low in decile 2 or 3,
normal in decile 4 to 7, high in
decile 8 or 9 and very high is in decile 10).
The Fraction of normal shows how much rain has
fallen this time as a
percentage
of the long-term mean.